Emoji is the world's fastest growing language, with millions of people now using the tiny pictures to express themselves in text form, alongside words.

Over six billion emojis are sent around the world every day on messaging apps alone, according to Swyft Media, but what do your emoji habits say about you?

Mobiles.co.uk decided to find out, asking 2,000 Brits to reveal their age, gender and profession, then select their top five emojis from a list of 40.

The mobile phone retailer then set about looking for clear patterns in respondents' emoji habits – and the results were very revealing.

(Image: Getty)

Across age, gender, and location the top five emojis varied very little (happy face, laughing face, thumbs up, kissing face and pleased face), but when looking at data split by profession, there were visible divides.

Artists revealed themselves to be an expressive or "emoji-nal" bunch, with the masked face, face palm and broken heart all most-used – far beyond any other profession.

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Plumbers, electricians and builders cited their love of the flexing arm, beer, banana and money face emojis - in sharp contrast to people working in marketing, who selected the kissing face, laughing face and cocktail.

Finally, teachers, although clearly sleepy, were revealed to be generally optimistic with the winking face and thumbs up at the top of their most-used list, followed by the glass of wine.

"Emojis have become a huge part of how we communicate with each other on a daily basis, with those little icons lighting up even the dullest of conversations," said Andrew Cartledge of Mobiles.co.uk.